


Free Man

by randomfanfic



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2019-01-15 12:23:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12321009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/randomfanfic/pseuds/randomfanfic
Summary: A separate realm where everyone spends their life in one room.





	Free Man

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!
> 
> This is my first piece, and I'm really sorry it's not fanfic :/
> 
> I'll try to upload frequently! :)
> 
> Mia

Free Man

Pale dawn light flooded an inconspicuous meadow with shadows. The sun seemed harsh and almost fake; it was too white to be real. As the light crept through the clearing, its cold fingers touched upon a white building. There were small, square windows, and it looked uninhabited.  
If you happened to be wandering down this lonely purlieu at this time of morning, you may have stopped and wondered who lived inside this strange structure. You may have even gone closer out of curiosity, and seen a brass plaque that stood out against the black-and-white of the rest of the building. And you just may have squinted in the barely-there light, and caught a glimpse of the inscribed words: The Institution. However, the surroundings were deserted.  
This building had several small rooms, with one corridor down the middle. Each room had the same furniture, and each room had just one person in it. Towards the end of the hallway was a room in which a man slept fitfully. He was old and balding, and looked ill. There were bags under his sunken eyes, and his face was unshaven and dirty.  
“Silver. Mr. Silver, you must wake up.”  
The man turned and tried to blink sleep from his old, weary eyes. “Is it the doctor?” he mumbled. “I’m not sick.”  
“Mr. Silver, it’s not the doctor.”  
Now the man was fully awake. The doctor was the only visitor to his room. Nobody else came; nobody else was allowed. As he caught a glance of the man standing outside his door, he let out a short, rasping laugh and allowed his head to fall back on the pillow.  
“I didn’t expect to see you here so soon, sir,” Silver said, a wry half-smile still upon his wrinkled face.  
“Time has flown,” acknowledged the man, yet there was no affection in his voice.  
Silver raised himself unsteadily from the bed, and gazed at the window a metre above his head. A crease appeared on his forehead, and his eyes seemed focused on something too far away to see, as if he was lost in memories of the past.  
“I have merely come to warn you. You have not spent your one day wisely -- now you will never spend it at all,” said the man. He turned away from Silver, as though to leave.  
“Wait.” Silver shifted his gaze to the man in his uniform. He paused, scrutinizing the man. He could not see his face, as a dark mask covered it, leaving room only for the eyes to see and the nose and mouth to breathe and speak.  
“I would like to spend my day right now,” Silver continued. He could see the flash of surprise through the man’s eyes.  
“That is not our policy,” said the man. “That is impossible.”  
“Why?” challenged Silver. He had been a lawyer before everything changed, and had clearly not lost his skills.  
The man paused. “You will die today. You cannot die outside. It is highly irregular.”  
“Yet this isn’t? Locking people up separately in rooms for their whole lives, with no other human interaction, besides the doctor and occasionally a government official? It’s not highly irregular to allow each person only one day outside? Sir?” Silver began to pace as he spoke, each of his words igniting fury within him. His white hair created a cloud around his head as he walked, thin and wispy, making him look eccentric.  
“It is the policy decided by the Council,” replied the man roughly, his eyes glinting unnaturally. “It’s a preventative measure; homeless people get fully equipped rooms to live in, and everyone is kept separate so there is no chance of another war starting. You know this well, Silver.”  
Silver picked up a glass from a small conveyor belt and took a sip of water. There was a short silence, before Silver broke it.  
“Unlike you, sir, I know what it was like before the Revolution. Everybody was free to go where they like, and do what they like. Is this the correct price to pay? Giving up our freedom in return for safety?”  
Silver set down the glass, and stood still, facing the door that the man stood behind. He wasn’t even sure he was a man anymore. “The Council predicted I would die today. I am old; soon I will be off your hands. Let me have this one last thing. Let me die a free man.” His sunken eyes were alight, and his wrinkles less pronounced. He looked twenty years younger.  
The man’s eyes were unreadable. His mouth was set in a steely line, and he was frozen like a statue. Silver waited patiently.  
Slowly, the man raised his hand to the door. There was the unmistakable click of the lock and the door swung open. Together, the two men walked down the corridor.  
As Silver stepped outside, the sunlight washed over his face and he turned his back on the dark, cold Institution. He wanted to stay outside forever, and never return to the room that had been his home for so long. He had been born a free man; this was the way it should be.


End file.
